


In the Diogenes Club Cellar

by gardnerhill



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Community: watsons_woes, Crack, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-08 20:09:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Diogenes Club Cellar

Holmes had needed to engage his brother in conversation about his latest intrigue. Not unkindly, he had asked Watson to vacate the Strangers' Room, as their witness was even more skittish and secretive than a Bohemian King had once managed. Watson knew he hadn't masked his hurt very well from Holmes' eyes, but he conceded and retreated.

The prospect of sitting in a silent chair reading a silent paper before a silent paper, amid a dozen or so equally silent men, had Watson exploring the halls around the rooms instead. So it was that in one deserted room he'd come upon a wrought-iron electric lift. Eager to try this new contraption, he had entered and pushed a button marked Cellar.

The door-gates had closed without a single rattle nor clank, and the entire thing had descended in equal silence. Fascination warred with a thread of apprehension, but Watson had never let such a feeling deter him from what looked like the first interesting thing to happen this morning.

The door opened onto a vast, echoing lumber-room, lit here with the brightly-shining electric bulbs that only very rich people had these days. Watson's steps echoed as he passed all sorts of amazing things: an occupied laboratory (he stole past the window in the door), a child's sled adorned with a single rosebud, a small stack of what looked like thin metal books, an engine of some sort, a stack of flat black discs on a spindle flanked by great wood-and-cloth crates, and … a chair.

A chair. A very odd chair – a great padded velvet and oak seat mounted on what appeared to be a sled, and festooned with all sorts of amazing brass equipment. A great disc of some black metal provided the back of this chair.

Watson's moustache quirked at the thought of tweaking Mycroft and his club during his exploration. He walked over to the chair and settled himself into it. It was very comfortable, and he relaxed into it. There was even its own personal electric-light source overhead; this would make a capital chair for reading the paper or his medical journals…Hello, what was this? Is that device supposed to be on a chair?

The brass device before him was built to look for all the world like the steering mechanism on a steam-ship (he had caught a good look at the FRIESLAND'S bridge before he and Holmes had fled). But instead of dials showing speed, pressure, and the like, something like a calendar showed that very day's date, in two separate rows. 08 JUNE 1895 1:38:42. Then 1:38:43, 1:38:44, 1:38:45. A calendar and clock. Hmph! No doubt designed for some very absent-minded chap who constantly needed reminding of the day's date, if he had to be shown the very same date twice. Perhaps the inventor had used a steamship's steering-mechanism as the bulwark of his ingenious calendar.

No doubt Holmes would be done with his witness soon, and it wouldn't do for Watson to be missing (or worse, found snooping where he oughtn't to be).

Watson stood up to vacate the chair. His bad leg twinged a little, and he automatically grabbed for the nearest thing to brace himself. It was the brass handle of the calendar.

It moved forward.

Lights flashed. The chair rumbled loudly, rhythmically, like the beating of a great mechanical heart. The whole chair-sled-disc device…lurched in place.

Watson slammed back into the chair, aware now that the disc behind him was spinning, clockwise. The lights flashed faster. The mechanical heartbeat became louder, faster.

And the calendar had changed.

The top calendar row had not changed save for the steady advance of the seconds and minutes.

The second one showed 25 JULY 2010 12:00:00.

As the entire cellar shimmered and simply disappeared in a cloud of flashing bright colours, John Watson's one coherent thought was that Mycroft Holmes would be very, very cross with him.

**Author's Note:**

> For the Watson's Woes 2011 July prompt ("Is that __(item name)__ supposed to be _(doing that)?").


End file.
